Duck Eats Rabbit: Exactly which type of relational phrase can disambiguate the perception of identical side by side ambiguous figures?

Many individuals cannot at first see two ambiguous figures as different interpretations simultaneously, even with effort. Here in a large sample replication we find that the phrase “duck eats rabbit” allows those who could not see a duck and rabbit side by side to do so. In a second experiment we show that a relational phrase “next to” that does not disambiguate the spatial position interpretation, does not similarly allow the duck to be seen next to the rabbit, supporting the proposal that top-down semantic-framing can influence perception of ambiguous figures

Mathewson et al., 2009 - To see or not to see

Raw and processed data from original stud

boxy_example_data_mne

example data for mne boxy loadin

Duck Eats Rabbit: Exactly which type of relational phrase can disambiguate the perception of identical side by side ambiguous figures?

Many individuals cannot at first see two ambiguous figures as different interpretations simultaneously, even with effort. Here in a large sample replication we find that the phrase “duck eats rabbit” allows those who could not see a duck and rabbit side by side to do so. In a second experiment we show that a relational phrase “next to” that does not disambiguate the spatial position interpretation, does not similarly allow the duck to be seen next to the rabbit, supporting the proposal that top-down semantic-framing can influence perception of ambiguous figures

Mathewson et al., 2009 - To see or not to see

Raw and processed data from original stud

Duck Eats Rabbit: Exactly which type of relational phrase can disambiguate the perception of identical side by side ambiguous figures?

Many individuals cannot at first see two ambiguous figures as different interpretations simultaneously, even with effort. Here in a large sample replication we find that the phrase “duck eats rabbit” allows those who could not see a duck and rabbit side by side to do so. In a second experiment we show that a relational phrase “next to” that does not disambiguate the spatial position interpretation, does not similarly allow the duck to be seen next to the rabbit, supporting the proposal that top-down semantic-framing can influence perception of ambiguous figures

boxy_example_data_mne

example data for mne boxy loadin